Cognitive Therapy

What is Cognitive Therapy?

Cognitive Therapy is focused on finding solutions. It explores how distortions in your way of thinking can lead to painful feelings and self-defeating behaviors. While we may have insight into our problems, insight is often not enough to foster change. The therapist takes an active role in identifying distorted thoughts and helps you learn more logical ways to think.

These new ways of thinking can reduce or eliminate depression and anxiety while enhancing your relationships and career success. It is also possible to recover from such problems as alcohol/drug abuse, compulsive sex and other behaviors. A distinct advantage of cognitive therapy is that you will learn techniques to manage your problems more effectively on your own.

Below is a list of cognitive distortions to watch out for that left unchecked can easily lead to feelings of depression and anxiety.

Checklist of Cognitive Distortions:

All-or-Nothing Thinking: You see things in absolute black-and-white categories.

Overgeneralization: You view a negative event as a never-ending pattern of defeat.

Mental Filter: You dwell on the negatives and ignore the positives.

Discounting the Positives: You insist that your accomplishments or positive qualities "don’t count" so you can maintain negative belief.

Jumping to Conclusions: You make a negative interpretation even though they’re no definite facts to convincingly support your conclusion. a. Mind Reading: You arbitrarily conclude that someone is reacting negatively to you, and you don’t bother to check this out. b. The Fortune-Teller Error: You anticipate that things will turn out badly, and you feel convinced that your prediction is an already a fact.

Magnification or Minimization: You blow things out of proportion (Catastrophizing) or you shrink their importance inappropriately.

Emotional Reasoning: You reason from how you feel: “I feel like an idiot so I really must be one” or "I don’t feel like doing this so I put it off."

Should Statements: You criticize yourself or other people with "shoulds" or "shouldn’ts", "musts", "oughts", "have tos", etc …

Labeling: You identify with your shortcomings. Instead of saying, "I made a mistake" you tell yourself, "I’m a jerk, fool or loser." When someone else’s behavior rubs you the wrong way, you attach a negative label to them.

Personalization and Blame: You blame yourself for something you were not entirely responsible for, or you blame other people and overlook ways that your own attitudes and behavior might contribute to the situation.